Invasive airport body searches elicit mass anger

A firestorm of protest and resistance is erupting across the U.S. in response to the Transportation Security Administration’s ongoing implementation of body scanners and invasive body searches.

On Nov. 11 the Council on American Islamic Relations issued “a travel advisory for airline passengers who may be subjected to new Transportation Security Administration ‘enhanced pat-downs’” that many who undergo the procedure describe as invasive and humiliating. (www.cair.com)

The advisory comes after two of the country’s largest pilots’ unions urged commercial pilots to avoid both full-body scanners and public pat-downs. “Pilots have compared the pat-downs to ‘sexual molestation.’ A flight attendants union has expressed similar concerns,” continued the CAIR statement.

Under TSA procedures implemented Oct. 29 a passenger can be summoned to go through the body scanner or “opt-out” and be subjected to the invasive body search. Passengers refusing both won’t be allowed to proceed to their boarding gate.

Passengers refusing to have their constitutional and human rights violated are being harassed, menaced and threatened with fines and arrests. In Florida a woman refusing to be body searched was reportedly handcuffed to a chair, surrounded by a dozen police and TSA officials, and had her ticket torn up.

The new scanners take a revealing full-body X-ray viewed on a monitor. Though TSA claims that the images can’t be stored, saved or transmitted and that they are deleted immediately after an official views them, this is contested. The body searches have been equated to sexual assault because TSA workers are forced to touch thighs, breast and groin areas of passengers searching for weapons.

Passengers and airline workers report being traumatized by the searches, especially those who have been raped or sexually assaulted or who watch loved ones, especially children, being groped and fondled. The pat-downs particularly concern the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community because searches will be done using a same-sex procedure based on what the TSA official thinks a passenger’s gender is.

Protests have stepped up as the TSA, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, hurries to get more body scanners in place for the holiday seasons. There are now 385 scanners at 68 airports in the U.S. The goal is to install 450 by the end of 2010 and 500 in 2011.

U.S. ‘security’ a multibillion dollar bonanza

The U.S.-based “security” industry, like private contractors used in U.S. imperialist wars, is a multibillion dollar industry.

Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff heads the Chertoff Group, a security “consulting” firm formed in 2009. In a CNN interview Dec. 30, 2009, Chertoff admitted he has at least one client manufacturing full-body scanners. The first five body scanners purchased by the federal government from Rapiscan were in 2005 when Chertoff was HS Secretary.

In 2009 the TSA purchased 150 more machines from Rapiscan with $25 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds. The use of scanners increased rapidly in 2010 as the federal government and security firms like Chertoff’s took advantage of the 2009 “Christmas Day Incident” (an alleged attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam) to make profits.

Chertoff and other security CEOs aren’t subject to body scanners and invasive searches because they fly on private jets or government-owned aircraft.

Under the racist guise of “fighting terrorism” after 9/11, Arabs and Muslims traveling to and from the U.S. are subject to racial profiling at transportation portals. As the economic depression makes it clearer that banks and corporations are the real threat, the repressive state apparatus casts an ever-wider net of oppression over broader segments of the population. In poor and oppressed communities it’s a daily occurrence.

Resistance growing

In a message to the US Airways Pilots Association, Captain Mike Cleary called the pilots’ stance against the scanners and pat-downs a “fight to restore the dignity we deserve. ... We are not the enemy and we will not stand for being treated as such before each duty period.” (abcnews.go.com, Nov. 9) The union is also protesting because of unknown levels of radiation the scanners may be emitting.

Others protesting the new TSA procedures include the Association of Flight Attendants-Communication Workers Local 66, the ACLU and individual passengers who are increasingly refusing the TSA’s new procedures and starting blogs and websites to spread word of resistance. Some are calling for an opt-out day on Nov. 24 when passengers would refuse body scans and instead request a search to clog or slow down airports during the busy holiday season.

The widespread resistance has forced the TSA to backpedal a bit, and even Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barrack Obama have issued statements. But to totally stop the body scanning and invasive searches, increasing resistance by travelers and workers like Michael Roberts is needed.

A pilot for ExpressJet Airlines, Roberts refused being body scanned and searched at Memphis International Airport on Oct. 22. He told CNN Nov. 9, “ ... they’re not just patting people’s arms and legs; they’re grabbing and groping and prodding pretty aggressively. I was trying to avoid this assault on my person, and I’m not willing to have images of my nude body produced for some stranger ... to look at either.”